II

The week's hard physical toil was unrelieved. After Bob and Jack Pollock

had driven the last staple in the last strand of barbed wire, they

turned their horses into the new pasture. The animals, overjoyed to get

free of the picket ropes that had heretofore confined them, took long,

satisfying rolls in the sandy corner, and then went eagerly to cropping

at the green feed. Bob, leaning on the gate, with the rope still in his

hand, experienced a glow of personal achievement greater than any he

remembered to have felt since, as a small boy, he had unaided reasoned

out the problem of clear impression on his toy printing press. He

recognized this as illogical, for he had, in all modesty, achieved

affairs of some importance. Nevertheless, the sight of his own animal

enjoying its liberty in an enclosure created by his own two hands

pleased him to the core. He grinned in appreciation of Elliott's

humorous parody on the sentimental slogan of the schools--"to make two

cedar posts grow where none grew before." There was, after all, a rather

especial satisfaction in that principle.

It next became necessary, he found, that the roof over the new office at

headquarters should receive a stain that would protect it against the

weather. He acquired a flat brush, a little seat with spikes in its

supports, and a can of stain whose base seemed to be a very

evil-smelling fish oil. Here all day long he clung, daubing on the

stain. When one shingle was done, another awaited his attention, over

and over, in unvarying monotony. It was the sort of job he had always

loathed, but he stuck to it cheerfully, driving his brush deep in the

cracks in order that no crevice might remain for the entrance of the

insidious principle of decay. Casting about in his leisure there for the

reason of his patience, he discovered it in just that; he was now at no

task to be got through with, to be made way with; he was engaged in a

job that was to be permanent. Unless he did it right, it would not be

permanent.

Below him the life of headquarters went on. He saw it all, and heard it

all, for every scrap of conversation rose to him from within the office.

He was amazed at the diversity of interests and the complexity of

problems that came there for attention.

"Look here, Mr. Thorne," said one of the rangers, "this Use Book says

that a settler has a right to graze ten head of stock _actually in use_

free of grazing charge. Now there's Brown up at the north end. He runs a

little dairy business, and has about a hundred head of cattle up. He

claims we ought not to charge him for ten head of them because they're

all 'actually in use.' How about it?"

Thorne explained that the exemption did not apply to commercial uses and

that Brown must pay for all. He qualified the statement by saying that

this was the latest interpretation of which he had heard.

In like manner the policies in regard to a dozen little industries and

interests were being patiently defined and determined--dairies, beef

cattle, shake makers, bees, box and cleat men, free timber users, mining

men, seekers for water concessions, those who desired rights of way,

permits for posts, pastures, mill sites--all these proffered their

requests and difficulties to the Supervisor. Sometimes they were

answered on the spot. Oftener their remarks were listened to, their

propositions taken under advisement. Then one or another of the rangers

was summoned, given instructions. He packed his mule, saddled his horse,

and rode away to be gone a greater or lesser period of time. Others were

sent out to run lines about tracts, to define boundaries. Still others,

like Ross Fletcher, pounded drill and rock, and exploded powder on the

new trail that was to make more accessible the tremendous cañon of the

river. The men who came and went rarely represented any but the smallest

interests; yet somehow Bob felt their importance, and the importance of

the little problems threshed out in the tiny, rough-finished office

below him. These but foreshadowed the greater things to come. And these

minute decisions shaped the policies and precedents of what would become

mighty affairs. Whether Brown should be allowed to save his paltry three

dollars and a half or not determined larger things. To Bob's half-mystic

mood, up there under the mottled shadows, every tiny move of this game

became portentous with fate. A return of the old exultation lifted him.

He saw the shadows of these affairs cast dim and gigantic against the

mists of the future. These men were big with the responsibility of a new

thing. It behooved them all to act with circumspection, with due heed,

with reverence----

Bob applied his broad brush and the evil-smelling stain methodically and

with minute care as to every tiny detail of the simple work. But his

eyes were wide and unseeing, and all the inner forces of his soul were

moving slowly and mightily. His personality had nothing to do with the

matter. He painted; and affairs went on with him. His being held itself

passive, in suspension, while the forces and experiences and influences

of one phase of his life crystallized into their foreordained shapes

deep within him. Yesterday he was this; now he was becoming that; and

the two were as different beings. New doors of insight were silently

swinging open on their hinges, old prejudices were closing, fresh

convictions long snugly in the bud were unfolding like flowers. These

things were not new. They had begun many years before when as a young

boy he had stared wide-eyed, unseeing and uncomprehending, gazing down

the sun-streaked, green, lucent depths of an aisle in the forest. Bob

painted steadily on, moving his little seat nearer and nearer the

eaves. When noon and night came, he hung up his utensils very carefully,

washed up, and tramped to the rangers' camp, where he took his part in

the daily tasks, assumed his share of the conversation, entered into the

fun, and contributed his ideas toward the endless discussions. No one

noticed that he was in any way different from his ordinary self. But it

was as though some one outside of himself, in the outer circle of his

being, carried on these necessary and customary things. He, drawn apart,

watched by the shrine of his soul. He did nothing, either by thought or

effort--merely watched, patient and rapt, while foreordained and mighty

changes took place--

He reached the edge of the roof; stood on the ladder to finish the last

row of the riven shingles. Slowly his brush moved, finishing the cracks

deep down so that the principle of decay might never enter. Inside the

office Thorne sat dictating a letter to some applicant for privilege.

The principle was new in its interpretation, and so Thorne was choosing

his words with the greatest care. Swiftly before Bob's inner vision the

prospect widened. Thorne became a prophet speaking down the years; the

least of these men in a great new Service became the austere champions

of something high and beautiful. For one moment Bob dwelt in a

wonderful, breathless, vast, unreal country where heroic figures moved

in the importance of all the unborn future, dim-seen, half-revealed. He

drew his brush across the last shingle of all. Something seemed to

click. Swiftly the gates shut, the strange country receded into infinite

distance. With a rush like the sucking of water into a vacuum the

everyday world drew close. Bob, his faculties once more in their

accustomed seat, looked about him as one awakened. His hour was over.

The change had taken place.

Thorne was standing in the doorway with Amy, their dictation finished.

"All done?" said he. "Well, you did a thorough job. It's the kind that

will last."

"I'm right on deck when it comes to painting things red," retorted Bob.

"What next?"

"Next," said Thorne, "I want you to help one of the boys split some

cedar posts. We've got a corral or so to make."

Bob descended slowly from the ladder, balancing the remainder of the red

stain. Thorne looked at him curiously.

"How do you like it as far as you've gone?" he permitted himself to ask.

"This isn't quite up to the romantic idea of rangering, is it?"

"Well," said Bob with conviction, "I suppose it may sound foolish; but I

never was surer of anything in my life than that I've struck the right

job."

As he walked home that night, he looked back on the last few days with a

curious bewilderment. It had all been so real; now apparently it meant

nothing. Thorne was doing good work; these rangers were good men. But

where had vanished all Bob's exaltation? where his feeling of the

portent and influence and far-reaching significance of what these men

were doing? He realized its importance; but the feeling of its

fatefulness had utterly gone. Things with him were back on a work-a-day

basis. He even laughed a little, good-humouredly, at himself. At the

gate to the new pasture he once more stopped and looked at his horse. A

deep content came over him.

"I've sure struck the right job!" he repeated aloud with conviction.

And this, could he have known it, was the outward and visible and only

sign of the things spiritual that had been veiled.